If you’re a fan of Brian McKnight, then, one, you’d know that love is a timeless formula for most of his songs.

Two, he believes in its power.

Three, you must hear him to be convinced.

The American R&B star returns to Malaysia for a one-night performance on April 9. Presented by Lads Entertainment, McKnight’s gig is expected to include slow jams such as Anytime, Back At One, Still and One Last Cry as part of his set list.

How can it not? “I’ve always had a passion for love songs and it seems that most people either want it, have it, or have lost it at some time in their life. It truly is one of the things we all have in common. Now that I am in love, I’m way more sentimental than I’ve ever been,” he says in a recent e-mail interview.

McKnight, who has two sons from his previous marriage, met and married Leilani Malia, a paediatric neurophysiologist from Maui, Hawaii, in 2016. His 16th studio album, Better, released via the Kobalt label last year, reflects on his newfound romance.

“After all the love songs I’ve written, it took me till I was 42 to actually find real love. I was fine being the bachelor forever, just being the rolling stone gathering no moss kind-of-thing, but when you find someone you want to really be with, that’s better than any other aspect of trying to be with someone.

“This whole album is the story of my relationship with Leilani, and Better itself is the anchor of how I feel, considering I didn’t think real love really existed. You can tell this album has a far more optimistic view of life in general than any one I’ve ever made,” he was quoted as saying in an interview with soulandjazzandfunk.com earlier this month.

In an industry known for a constantly revolving door of artists, McKnight has easily established himself with an enviable record of chart consistency since his eponymous debut album was released 25 years ago. He has collaborated with performers across every genre including Quincy Jones, Justin Timberlake, Mariah Carey, Diddy, Christina Aguilera Rascal Flatts, Nelly, Vanessa Williams, Willie Nelson and Kenny G.

He reflects, “I think I’m actually better musically now than I’ve ever been. But, times change and along with it, music changes, so it’s harder to carve your own niche. However, I’m not discouraged. I still believe in the power of great music.”

McKnight is unaffected by the constant references to his 16 Grammy nominations and no wins by the media. He is third only to Morten Lindberg and Snoop Dogg for the record of the most Grammy nominations without a trophy.

When he finally lands that elusive Grammy, would he be jumping for joy or shedding tears of happiness?

“A Grammy would be great but I don’t make songs for awards. I make music for people to listen to and enjoy, just like I always have and always will,” McKnight says without an iota of bitterness.

While his R&B contemporaries in the 90s have faded into oblivion, McKnight continues to churn out albums that are still relevant in today’s world. His secret to longevity: “If I knew that answer I’d bottle it and sell it!”

McKnight, 48, believes there is still a market for R&B adult contemporary music. “I think there’s a generation of kids now that are making their music the way they hear it. Sometimes people want to hold these kids to a standard and that’s not fair to them. There’s so much talent waiting to be discovered out there so anything is possible. My two sons are also budding musicians but I only guide when I’m asked to and I participate when I am called upon. I am so proud of all they have become and what I know they will accomplish.”

For someone who never had any formal vocal training, McKnight keeps his silky smooth, gospel-­reared tones polished by practising daily.

“I never take my gift for granted,” says McKnight who started his musical journey as a singer in his church choir in New York, and later as a bandleader in his high school.

At 19, he signed his first recording deal with Mercury Records. In 1992, his debut album was released followed by I Remember You (1995) and Anytime (1997), which sold over two million copies and was nominated for a Grammy. In 1999 McKnight released Back At One on Motown Records, which sold over three million copies.

In addition to being a singer, songwriter and producer, McKnight is also a multi-instrumentalist who plays nine instruments including the piano, guitar, bass, drums, percussions, trombone, tuba, flugelhorn and trumpet.

Like any industry, the music business comes with its share of trials and tribulations, and McKnight finds dealing with the politics challenging. Yet, he can’t see himself doing anything different.

“I wouldn’t change anything,” he says. “The way I see it, I can’t go back. I can only change my trajectory forward and hopefully, it stays positive.”

An Evening With Brian McKnight, a black tie event, is on April 9 at the Mandarin Oriental Kuala Lumpur. Tickets start from RM288; check out www.ticketpro.com.my for more information.

Ever since returning to the spotlight a couple of years ago, veteran singer Zaiton Sameon has been keeping busy with singing gigs around Malaysia and across the causeway.

“Singapore is like my second home now,” she said when met at a press conference in Kuala Lumpur recently. “I am there almost every week performing at a dinner event. I also get invitations to sing in Brunei.”

She said she has also completed recordings of nine new songs for an upcoming album titled Terimalah Aku, which is still waiting for a release date.

“One of my favourite songs on the album is called Insan Kecil,” she shared. “It’s a song about orphaned and abandoned children.”

Zaiton turns 60 years old this year, and while her speaking voice is ever so soft, she hasn’t lost the melodious vocals that help made her popular in the late 1980s. Mention her name, and the 1987 award-winning tune Menaruh Harapan comes to mind.

“Menaruh Harapan is still the one song everyone requests for all the time,” Zaiton said with a smile. “Sometimes I will sing Menaruh Harapan more than once on the same night.”

No doubt, there have been many changes in Zaiton’s life. For one, her current image is different from the sexy one most fans remember.

But, like a true celebrity, while having her photos taken for this article, Zaiton made sure the photographer got the right angles that would show her in the best light.

Zaiton dropped out of the limelight after a horrendous automobile accident in 1990. That tragic incident robbed her of her 13-year-old son, and killed fellow musician Ismail Shaari.

The then-33-year-old Zaiton suffered massive injuries to her neck and legs, and was in a coma for six months. In 2012, her life-story was turned into a film titled Zaiton Ceritaku, starring actress Nadia Aqilah as Zaiton.

Today, the singer is happy whenever she’s performing on stage singing the song she is famous for, as well as new songs from Terimalah Aku.

“I am looking forward for the album to be released so I can go on a promotional tour. InshaAllah, today’s music fans will accept me and my new songs.”

He received the Best Supporting Actor award (Pemeran Pendukung Pria Terbaik) at the prestigious Indonesian Box Office Movie Awards 2017 (IBOMA) recently his role in the Indonesian flick Cek Toko Sebelah. Chew beat other nominees like Indonesian actors Alex Abbad and Cornelio Sunny for the award.

According to a report on bintang.com, Chew was surprised by his win. “Cek Toko Sebelah was a film made with honesty. There were no special effects. No overseas shoot. We had a simple story. Thank you for this honour. I don’t know what to say,” he said in his acceptance speech.

In Cek Toko Sebelah, Chew plays Koh Afuk, a store owner looking to pass down the family’s store business to son Edwin (Ernest Prakasa). However, Edwin is reluctant to take over the business as he has his own successful career. Cek Toko Sebelah was the big winner at the star-studded event held in Jakarta, Indonesia as it also took home awards for Best Supporting Actress (Asri Wilas), Best Screenplay (Ernest), Best Newcomer (Gisella Anastasia), Best Poster and the top prize, Best Film.

The comedy released in December last year was a major box office hit in Indonesia, drawing in over two million viewers.

Something big is coming down the pike as Blindspot hurtles headlong towards the end of its second season.

In the show, Kurt Weller (played by Sullivan Stapleton) and his team at the Federal Bureau Of Investigation (FBI) are racing to figure out what terrorist group code-named Sandstorm has planned for “Phase Two”. Clues about what Phase Two entails, despite the FBI’s best efforts in deciphering a good number of complex tattoos on Jane Doe’s (Jaimie Alexander) body, have been scarce much to fans’ dismay.

So, when the opportunity came along to talk to actress Michelle Hurd, who plays the leader of Sandstorm, Shepherd, we jumped at the chance to obtain some intel.

“We find Shepherd in Thailand,” Hurd said, revealing what’s ahead for her character over the phone from Bangkok, Thailand. “She’s here to get a certain ingredient – the last thing she needs – for Phase Two of her plan. She finds herself for the first time in a really dangerous situation that she’s backed up into a corner and we’ll see how she gets out of it. It’s pretty exciting.”

Hurd told us she was in Bangkok for a week to shoot the stunts and action for an episode of the show, which is scheduled to air in Malaysia on April 27.

“I do my own fight scenes,” said the martial artist with enviable abs to boot. “If there are huge action sequences where I’m jumping on a car, I have a stunt double.”

Make no mistake; this episode in Bangkok is not the season finale but one that is necessary in order for all the pieces to fall into place for Shepherd’s endgame. She told us that the writers have clued her in on what Sandstorm hopes to accomplish.

“I just kind of got a hint as to what Shepherd’s overall endgame is but I can’t tell you what that is,” she said cautiously.

Shepherd (Hurd) has Weller (Sullivan Stapleton) right where she wants him in Blindspot.

What Hurd could tell us, however, was the fight scenes are one of the things she loved best about being on a show as action-packed as Blindspot.

“We’re just like big kids. When we get a script and see that we get to do some kind of exciting physical activity, we kind of get giddy. It’s like we get to open a big present. I love that,” said the 50-year-old American actress.

“I also love all the strong female characters they create on Blindspot. I think Martin (Gero, the show’s creator) has a really good handle on making complex, interesting and powerful women who also have their vulnerability and sexuality.

“From Patterson (Ashley Johnson) and Tasha (Audrey Esparza) to Jane, Shepherd and Nas (Archie Panjabi) – I think they are all really interesting and why people enjoy watching the show.”

Blindspot has a lot of intense moments and thrilling action sequences as well. And according to Hurd, the actors have no trouble breaking any tension that develops from those kinds of scenes.

“On set, we have a great time. It’s really a great group of actors. It’s such a pleasure to step onto a set, especially in its second season, and be welcomed without hesitation. We joke a lot. There’s a lot of laughter,” she explained.

Interestingly, Stapleton, she divulged, was quite the opposite of the perpetually serious Weller. “With a person like Stapleton, you can’t help but giggle because he’s such a funny creature. As serious as he is on the show, he’s as goofy off camera,” she said with amusement. “Everybody is more relaxed and comical than their characters. Johnson is very funny as Patterson and she’s incredibly funny in person. Her comic timing is second to none,” she added.

Similarly, where Shepherd comes across as a chilling baddie who plays her cards close to her chest, Hurd was friendly and forthcoming. Shepherd, in Hurd’s eyes, is a committed, smart and passionate person, like a lioness.

“She is a force to be reckoned with. Her relationships with (her adopted children) Jane and Roman (Luke Mitchell) are complex but part of the core of who she is. Part of the reason she’s doing what she does is because Jane was betrayed and wants to make sure she is vindicated,” she clarified.

“She’s a really good committed soldier but she also has a very strong maternal core. There’s a complex dichotomy going on – a soldier’s mother.”

Although Hurd describes her current role as Shepherd as “delicious”, it is nowhere near as challenging as the Lope de Vega play she did for a Shakespeare company in Washington DC titled Dog In The Manger.

“I literally had two-and-a-half hours of intense dialogue – very challenging but very rewarding. Theatre was probably my most challenging role,” she said.

But, why get into acting at all when it’s such a tough business? She joked that she had no choice.

“My parents were both actors. I was the youngest of three girls. My middle sister is a choreographer and dance teacher. My elder sister is a stage combat choreographer as well as an acting teacher. It was in my blood and I couldn’t get out of it,” she explained with a laugh.

“But it is what makes me the most happy. The moment I’m either on stage or on set in front of a camera, it’s one of the happiest moments I have.”

It is exhausting just thinking about Jennifer Lopez’s schedule: In the past year, the movie star, singer, dancer and producer has been juggling her first major television role – in police drama Shades Of Blue – with the rigours of a Las Vegas residency, where she will perform 58 concerts in 18 months.

And if that is not enough, she is also preparing for the lead role in a live TV musical, Bye Bye Birdie Live!, and will produce, star in and judge World Of Dance, a new competition show launching this spring.

Yet, the 47-year-old Lopez shows up at a recent press event in Los Angeles looking as radiant and impeccably turned out as always.

She says she maintains a laser-like focus on whatever project is at hand and still feels “very creatively motivated to do a lot of things”.

In the second season of Shades Of Blue, Lopez reprises the role of Harlee Santos, a New York City police detective and single mother torn between covering up for her corrupt fellow officers and doing the right thing.

“The first season was so challenging because it was emotionally taxing,” she says of the series, which co-stars Ray Liotta (Goodfellas, 1990) as Lieutenant Wozniak, her character’s corrupt boss.

The stakes for Harlee – who in Season One became a reluctant informant in a Federal Bureau of Investigation case against Wozniak – are set to get even higher this season.

“The mess just becomes even bigger, the moral lines and ethical lines are pushed even further and the struggle becomes even more intense for her because of her daughter and because of who she is as a person and her beliefs,” says the star.

She hints that Harlee will have to get her hands even dirtier in the upcoming episodes.

“I knew when I read the first page of the first scene of this season. I was, like, ‘OK, we are burying the body. Wrap him up in a curtain and then knock his teeth out’. So I knew that, emotionally, it wasn’t going to get any easier for her.”

But her goal is to keep the character relatable no matter what. “I think my job is to always keep her truthful, but beyond that, even though you are seeing her do the most outrageous, heinous things, that you still believe she’s a good person.”

The character’s troubled past as a victim of domestic abuse adds to the layers of complexity because it means she feels trapped in toxic relationships such as the one she has with Wozniak.

“I think it’s a key element to her character. It’s like that vicious circle of abuse that she can’t get out of. She can’t get out of the relationship and really wants to and really is trying to. So, she compromises herself constantly. It is kind of an abused-woman mentality that she’s trying to heal.”

This is the first major role in a TV drama for Lopez, who cut her teeth as one of the Fly Girls – the team of backup dancers on In Living Color (1990 to 1994), the comedy sketch show that launched the careers of actors Jim Carrey and Jamie Foxx.

She landed her breakout role playing the murdered Tejano singer Selena in the acclaimed 1997 biopic of the same name, which earned her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress.

Lopez quickly moved on to bigger films and soon became a bankable name on the marquee, with hits in the romantic comedy genre (Maid In Manhattan, 2002) and thrillers (The Boy Next Door, 2015), all the while cranking out chart-topping pop hits such as If You Had My Love (1999) and On The Floor (2011).

How does she find time for it all? Lopez says she has learnt to focus on the task in front of her and tune out everything else.

This includes, presumably, the glare of media attention, which has long fixated on her personal life, including a romance and broken engagement with actor Ben Affleck (2002 to 2004) and her subsequent marriage and divorce from singer Marc Anthony (2004 to 2014), the father of her nine-year-old twins, Max and Emme.

“You know, there are only so many hours in the day and somehow I always am able to focus and get it done,” she says.

“I do one thing at a time and I put my full attention on whatever I’m doing at that moment,” says the star, who also executive-produces many of her projects these days, including Shades Of Blue, musical Bye Bye Birdie Live! and reality show World Of Dance.

“Even if I’m filming all day on Shades Of Blue, at lunch, when I know I’m not in the next scene and I’m going to have a free hour or two, I do a voice session to learn a new song that I’m going to have to do for Bye Bye Birdie.

“I’m just able to compartmentalise that way and go, ‘OK, I need to switch now and concentrate on this’.”

For Shades Of Blue, Lopez is not an executive producer in name only. “I’m involved in all aspects of it. I’m there as Harlee and I concentrate on that, I know that’s my main job. But I’ve always been side by side with the director and writers working on every scene and all the characters, making sure everything makes sense and looks right.

“I’ve developed a thing with every director this season, which was really nice – they would come to me and ask my advice on the show and where this is going or where that’s going and how things should be. It’s a great role to have, to be that involved in the whole vision of it as opposed to just playing my role.”

On top of all this, the former American Idol judge is two-thirds of the way through her first Las Vegas residency, which launched in January last year and ends in June, by which time she would have performed 58 concerts at the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino.

But she says this is not part of some career master plan: “I don’t think about what I did five years ago or what I might do five years from now. I just go with what I feel right now.”

Through it all, her drive remains undimmed. “It’s a full year, but it’s creatively fulfilling for me as an actor, as a singer, as a performer, as a dancer and I couldn’t be more excited about tackling each one of those projects.”

She adds with a smile: “How I’m going to feel in a year from now, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll want to take a year off.”

Based on a comic book series obsessed with the ever-closing gap between humanity and AI-powered technology, March 2017 film Ghost In The Shell gets ready to rocket onto cinema screens worldwide.

Here’s what it is about:

Android security agent The Major and the team she leads within a counter-terrorist unit find themselves set against an expert hacker who can, it seems, get anywhere and control anything. He’s even got a lead on The Major herself.

The film is based on a hugely complex comic book series which spawned any number of TV series and animated movies of its own, including the critically acclaimed 1995 feature length Ghost In The Shell from Production IG – high standards, perhaps impossibly high to satisfy franchise fans.

Scarlett Johansson has become the face of Ghost In The Shell, playing the role of The Major (or Major Motoko Kusanagi, as she’s known in other mediums).

An international cast continues the effort to appeal to an international audience, with Japanese legend Takeshi Kitano leading Section 9, whose membership includes the Singaporean actor Chin Han (Marco Polo), Denmark’s Pilou Asbaek (Game Of Thrones) and Australia’s Lasarus Ratuere – plus Michael Pitt of Hannibal and Boardwalk Empire as the villain and a new character played by France’s acclaimed Juliette Binoche (Chocolat).

Coming up through commercial directing, Rupert Sanders helmed Snow White And The Huntsman, starring Kristen Stewart, Charlize Theron and Chris Hemsworth, before moving on to Ghost In The Shell.

(During work on the Snow White reimagining, Stewart was actually approached to co-star in another anime adaption long in the making, Akira, which has been in pre-production since 2002.)

The film itself samples storyline elements from TV series Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex S1 and S2.

Actress Siti Saleha was only 18 when she scored her first acting gig in the television drama-musical 5 Jingga. And, get this, she didn’t even know that she had walked into an audition for a drama.

“I thought I was casting for another commercial,” she said during an interview in Petaling Jaya, Selangor.

The 27-year-old actress just went along during the audition. Three months later she was told she got the part, playing the leading role, a head cheerleader. “I just decided to go for it,” said Siti who has not turned back since.

That first role was a monumental feat for a newcomer with no experience. The role required her to sing and dance, but Siti wasn’t a “triple threat” and the director must have known this.

“They didn’t allow me to sing. I tried but I guess I couldn’t follow the tempo. I just danced,” she recalled with a laugh.

While it may have sounded easy for Siti to nail her first leading role through an accidental audition, she admitted that her lack of experience was obvious on set. The England-born actress couldn’t quite nail her Bahasa Malaysia lines to sound natural.

“I won’t lie. The first time was quite bad. In terms of my accent and whatnot, I was trying my best to say the lines.”

Siti would go on to act in other dramas such as Kasut Tumit Tinggi and Kapten Boleh. Eventually, her beginner’s luck ran out as the offers stopped coming. It was a major reality check for the Malay-English actress.

“Suddenly, it all just went quiet. I was like, ‘What is going on?’. I started thinking if this (acting) was really what I wanted in the long run,” she lamented.

Siti then decided to focus on her studies and pick acting projects carefully, believing that everything will fall into place.

It would take three years for Siti to finally score a breakout role through the romantic TV drama Nora Elena. Her effective performance as a heartbroken woman with a traumatic past earned her a legion of fans.

She was thankful for the success but at the same time, learned the hard way that popularity came with a price. Siti’s private life was under scrutiny when photos of her socialising at parties surfaced on online news portals and it painted a negative “party girl” image of the actress. The actress said the photos came from her private Facebook account.

“When I saw that, I was like, ‘Oh no’. So, I removed people I didn’t know from my account. Since then, I started being more aware of what photos to upload and all that.”

Her older brother Shamsul Annuar, or Sam of local rock band Bunkface, was upset at the incident.

“His baby sister is in the industry and he thought that I could cope with the responsibility that came with fame. After that, you got to learn to play it right lah. People will always find stories about you. But if you have an objective and show people that you’re in this industry for real, then nothing can take you down,” Siti affirmed.

She was right. After that incident, reporters would be hard-pressed to find any unsavoury stories about Siti. Instead, she was making headlines for her professional life.

In 2013, she scored wins for Most Popular TV Actress and Most Popular Film Actress at Anugerah Bintang Popular. She broke away from her usual “pretty girl roles” to do comedy (Mamak Cupcake), psychological thriller (upcoming local English-language movie Spiral) and horror (yet-to-be-released Tujuh).

Most recently, Siti starred in drama 7 Hari Mencintaiku, based on a popular novel about a spoilt rich girl named Mia Adriana, who upon her father’s request, had to marry a kampung boy.

Before shooting for the drama began, Siti came across a fan survey about who should play Mia. “My name was on the list but there were a lot of comments saying I couldn’t do it,” she recalled.

But as usual, Siti proved her critics wrong as 7 Hari Mencintaiku was not only a highly-rated drama which drew up to five million viewers per episode, the actress earned rave reviews for her performance.

Following the success of 7 Hari Mencintaiku, there have been news that Siti is now making demands for higher acting fees. The actress said there is truth to the news report. After almost a decade in the business, Siti said it was the right time to do so.

“I felt that I’ve come a long way. I’ve been stepped on too many times. Back then, I would (accept roles) without thinking of how much I should be paid. I can’t be like that anymore. There comes a time when I should put a price for the experience I bring (to a project),” she reasoned.

Throughout her life, Siti believes in working hard to earn the confidence of others. Her parents divorced when she was only 10. Growing up with her Malaysian father, she said it wasn’t easy to convince him to let her act.

“He was scared. This business has a lot of cheaters and whatnot. And I have had my fair share of bad experiences but I guess going through all that made me a stronger person. I was bringing in some good money. I was independent. I drove myself to the set. I didn’t ask him for anything. I showed him that I know how to take care of myself,” she said.

Siti – who will be getting married to a man named Lutfi Azhar this year – is unapologetic about asking for a higher acting fee.

Actor Amar Baharin’s face beams as he recalls the moment he found out he was going to be a father.

“I’m so happy today. I’ve been smiling from ear to ear,” says Amar, 31, at an event in Kuala Lumpur launching Astro’s new Bahasa Malaysia dramas.

Amar, who married actress Amyra Rosli, 25, in November 2016, just received confirmation the day before that his wife was seven weeks pregnant.

“A few days after we got back from Australia, where we shot a programme, Amyra was experiencing stomach pains and vomiting,” he recalls.

The couple, who has been trying for a baby, decided to do a home pregnancy test but the results were unclear. “She went on working like normal but then the pain got really intense yesterday. I took her to the hospital and we did a scan. When we finally saw it and heard the baby’s heartbeat, we felt really grateful. There are a lot of people who have difficulties getting a baby,” he continues.

Asked why the couple chose to go public with the news so early in the pregnancy (he broke the news on Instagram almost as soon as they found out), Amar responds: “Our industry is really small. When I went to the hospital yesterday, there were people who saw us, and people who tweeted (about it) so I can’t avoid these things. We discussed with each other and we wanted to share this news when we got the doctor’s confirmation.”

The doctor has ordered for Amyra to get as much rest as possible as she is in her first trimester.

“She’s a workaholic. So, now she has to force herself to rest. Even when she’s at home, she would be doing house chores. I want to change her mindset. I want her to understand that getting lots of rest is important for the baby,” he adds.

Although Amyra isn’t filming right now, she still has her hosting and endorsement duties that need to be postponed following the latest development.

Moving forward, the father-to-be says Amyra will still be working during her pregnancy but at a more relaxed pace.

“I have told her manager (who is also Amyra’s mother) not to accept any offers for long-running drama series. She can take on telemovies or hosting jobs where she doesn’t have to commit a lot time. Filming dramas can be taxing as it goes on to the wee hours of the morning, it’s not good for her health,” he says.

Speaking of long-running dramas, Amar – who is best known for his work in Kerana Terpaksa Aku Relakan – has built his entire career on them.

“I’ve been known to be an actor in TV dramas, and I love acting in them. The longer they are, the more I love them. Acting in these long dramas allow me to develop my character whereas with shorter narratives, the moment you get to (have a sense of your character), it’s over.”

Amar will be starring in the 21-episode drama Jadikan Aku Yang Kedua, to be aired on Astro Oasis in April. The drama marks Amar and Amyra’s first time acting opposite each other since they tied the knot.

“We get to go to work in one car and come home in one car which helps us save a lot,” he says with a laugh.

Indeed, being married so far has had no negative impact on the couple’s marketability. In fact, it’s been the opposite.

“Honestly, I was scared at first when people said that after you get married, there’ll be less job offers but I think that’s in the 1990s. We have been receiving so much more offers together. It’s been a blessing,” Amar shares.

In one Ghost In The Shell scene, Scarlett Johansson’s Major does a “deep dive” into the cyber-mind of a compromised android, in which she really gets into its mind, memories, and every deep, dark secret that it might have.

It’s too bad the movie itself doesn’t do the same thing with its source material.

This Hollywood version of the iconic manga/anime is more like a shallow dip into that cyberpunk world than a deep dive.

Johansson stars as Major Mira Killen, an agent of counter-terrorism unit Section 9, which also includes agents Batou (Pilou Asbæk), Togusa (Chin Han) and led by Chief Daisuke Aramaki (Takeshi Kitano).

Fully cybernetic apart from her brain, Major is a cyborg with superhuman capabilities, but has no memory of her life before her brain was transferred to this body. When Section 9 After a run-in with a hacker called Kuze (Michael Pitt), she starts getting glitches in memories, and soon learns that her past is not what she thinks it is.

Created by Masamune Shirow, Ghost In The Shell began life as a manga called Kokaku Kidotai (“Mobile Armoured Riot Police”), that ran from 1989 to 1990.

The manga spawned a franchise that included two television series, video games and three feature-length anime movies – the most iconic of which was 1995’s Ghost In The Shell, directed by Mamoru Oshii.

It is from that Oshii’s film that this version draws most of its influences.

From the iconic opening “shelling sequence” in which Major’s brain is transplanted into her cybernetic body, to the her camo fight scene, some of the film’s best scenes were lifted directly from the anime.

Visually, the movie is stunning, and the faithful reenactment of some of the anime’s more iconic scenes will certainly please the fans.

However, the visual brilliance of the movie only slightly mask the hollowness of the movie’s shell.

Much has been said about the film’s supposed “white-washing” in casting Johansson as The Major, who was originally a Japanese woman called Motoko Kusanagi.

While it can be quite distracting to have an actress as well-known as Johansson in the role, the real issue here isn’t who the actress is, but rather, why her Major is such a major letdown.

The “ghost” in the title refers to the human soul residing inside a cybernetic “shell”, but there is hardly any soul in the way Johansson’s character is portrayed.

In the manga, Major is a feisty, almost comical character who is completely self-aware of just what she is.

In the 1995 anime, she is a lot more serious, and philosophises a lot about her own existence.

The Hollywood version, however, dumbs her character down to a brooding superhero, and dilutes the existential philosophising to a simple question of “Who am I?”.

It’s not just Major who gets that treatment. The orginial franchise’s science fiction concepts, technologies and futuristic elements form the foundation of the Ghost In The Shell universe, but director Rupert Sanders merely uses them as visual candy or plot devices to move the action from one scene to another.

And don’t even get me started on Cutter (Peter Ferdinando), an appropriately named cookie-cutter corporate bad guy who just sees Major as an asset.

This over-simplification of the original franchise’s themes and characters is what frustrates the most about the movie.

While it is understandable that the producers might have wanted a simpler version of the story to introduce the franchise to non-fans, it’s hard to shake the feeling that this would have been a much better movie had it featured a fully-formed Major instead of one who is still obviously in the infancy of her development.

As it is, however, this is just a ghost of an adaptation packaged in a pretty-looking but rather hollow shell.

Ghost In The Shell

Henry Golding has been cast as the lead actor in the much-talked about film Crazy Rich Asians, according to Hollywood Reporter. He will play the role of Nick Young, the wealthy, eligible bachelor from Singapore.

This will be his first feature film. Golding, 30, is more known as a host and travel presenter on shows such as Without Boundaries, Welcome To The Railroad and Now Everybody Can Travel To New Zealand. He started off in showbiz as a host on 8TV’s Quickie segment.

A trained hairstylist, Golding is of English and Iban parentage. He grew up in England and is currently based in Malaysia and Singapore. In a 2015 interview with The Star, Golding mentioned he is always game to branch out and try new things when it comes to his career.

“You can hit the proverbial roof at certain areas in the industry unless you venture out. And I never really set out in my career to stay in one place. I wanted to go out and try new things. Luckily, I’ve had that opportunity,” said Golding.

The plot in Crazy Rich Asians revolves around Rachel Chu, an American-born Chinese girl who goes to Singapore with her boyfriend, Nick, to attend his best friend’s wedding. Upon arriving, she finds out that he is from a wealthy family and all the single ladies are out to woo him. On top of that, Nick’s mother is not too fond of Rachel.

Constance Wu from TV sitcom Fresh Off The Boat is set to play Rachel while Tan Sri Michelle Yeoh will portray Nick’s mother, Eleanor. Jon M. Chu, who previously directed the heist movie Now You See Me 2, will direct.

Danish band Mew has been around for more than 20 years, but there is just something about the band’s music that makes it sound as fresh as a newly formed indie rock band. Its combination of Sigur Ros-esque atmospheric rock, edgy indie energy and epic expansiveness has garnered the band a global following.

The band will be playing in Malaysia again on May 10 as part of this year’s Urbanscapes creative arts festival, which is due to run from May 5 to 21. Other international acts which will also be performing include Clean Bandit and TTNG. Mew’s show will be supported by Indonesian band The Trees And The Wild, and Lust.

According to Mew bassist Johan Wohlert, the band’s upcoming show here will be very different from the last time the band performed in Kuala Lumpur, in one of Urbanscapes’ standalone satellite shows in 2013.

“We’ve been experimenting with new visual content to go with our songs, and we’ll be playing some of our new songs as well,” he said in a phone interview.

Mew, which currently comprises Wohlert, vocalist Jonas Bjerre and drummer Silas Utke Graae Jorgensen, made its breakthrough in 2003 with the album Frengers, which featured hit songs like She Came Home For Christmas, Comforting Sounds and Am I Wry? No.

The 2005 follow-up album And The Glass Handed Kites was equally well-received.

Mew will be releasing its new album Visuals at the end of April 2017, and Wohlert said the record will sound just like a Mew record, but with a more positive sound.

“We are a slightly melancholic-sounding band that makes beautiful melodic music. This new record is the same kind of style, but is also very positive in terms of the overall vibe. The tempo is also faster,” he said.

“It’s just the way we felt when we made it. The record usually reflects the mood of the band, and we were in a positive place when we made it.”

Mew’s band dynamics have changed over the years as well, Wohlert said. “As we grow older, we became a little wiser. When you start out you don’t know what you’re good at. But you keep honing your craft and pick up things along the way. These days, our roles in the band are more defined; we are each good at different things and we use that to our advantage,” he said.

Wohlert, who left the band in 2006 to concentrate on being a father and rejoined in 2014, said the decision to return to Mew was an easy one. “I just missed the great music we did together, and playing the songs. I had done five records with the guys, and we’ve still got that old friendship going,” he explained.

He reckons the fact that the three of them are such good friends is the secret to Mew’s longevity.

“It’s getting along and trying to be good friends. That’s a key word. If you can maintain the friendship, then you can maintain the need to create together. As long as it’s still fun and we can get along as people, we can go on forever!”

Tickets for Mew’s Urbanscapes 2017 show at KL Live are priced at RM162 (pre-sale) and RM192, and can be purchased online at www.ticketpro.com.my. For more information, visit http://ift.tt/Smo6yG.

Attention all Tomb Raider enthusiasts – Warner Bros and MGM have revealed the first look at Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft.

In newly-released photos, first published in Vanity Fair, Vikander is shown taking on the role first commandeered by Angelina Jolie in the 2001 big-screen adaptation of the hit Eidos action-adventure videogame franchise, which has sold more than 35 million units worldwide.

The photos show Vikander – clad in the character’s iconic outfit of a tank top and cargo pants – on an island off the coast of Japan. Armed with a piece of wood (or possible archaeological discovery), she looks ready to fight in one of the images.

Norwegian filmmaker Roar Uthaug (The Wave) is directing the film, which also stars Dominic West (The Affair) and Walton Goggins (Sons Of Anarchy).

The movie will take a different direction than the original Tomb Raider, focusing instead on the videogame series’ 2013 reboot, which chronicled Croft’s origins and her first mission as an archaeologist.

In an interview with GQ, Uthuag explained that the film will present an entirely new version of Lara Croft that fans of the 2001 movie have yet to see.

“As an origin story, this movie will introduce Lara Croft as a young woman who hasn’t yet found her way and her place in the world; a young woman with great spirit and potential,” he said. “We follow her struggles and her journey toward becoming the person she was meant to be and earning the role of Tomb Raider.” – Reuters/Variety/Sarah Ahern

Classic rock as a sound and style, may not be as actively peddled these days, what with the deluge of generic R&B, lame alt rock and disposable pop seemingly all-conquering.

However, feed a bunch of boys from Subang Jaya in Selangor a diet of The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream, The Doors, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, and something resembling the halcyon days of 1970s rock emerges.

Speakzodiac certainly seems to know a thing or two about what makes vintage rock tick, and that is displayed in its resplendent glory in its potentially album-of-the-year debut, Northern Drug. The five-song excursion, released at the tail end of last year, belies the band’s generational and geographic placement.

And while legendary classic bands of yore may have been used as a reference point, guitarist/vocalist PA Hafiz and drummer Muzaffar Johar have carved a sound that’s surreptitiously closer to the millennium, grafting from the Liverpool scene which spawned the likes of The Coral and The Zutons.

Opening track Spongy B, St Just and Passerby certainly echo that vibe, though Bonfire is a straight ahead psychedelic blast, ala Hendrix, with some face-melting fretwork by Hafiz.

Northern Drug bucks a lot of trends plagued by the local indie scene, and it’s completely the better for it. For a refreshing taste of how diverse and engaging rock music can get, pop this CD in and sit back.

The Speakzodiac boys have a new album out. Photo: Speakzodiac

1. Does Speakzodiac mean anything in particular, or merely for the sake of a cool name?

We performed with a different name before settling on Speakzodiac. We suppose it’s self-explanatory, in terms of the meaning, though the more you try to define it, the more ambiguous it could get, and that probably resonates with the music we play.

Speakzodiac’s debut, Northern Drug, might just be what the doctor ordered to turn the local indie scene on its head. Photo: Speakzodiac

2. Would you describe your music as unconventional, and who is into this type of music, anyway?

We never go about making music with any specific direction, be it conventional or unconventional, but we certainly make music without any exterior involvement or motives besides our own sense of purpose. If that is described as either conventional or unconventional, then you might have your answer.

Generally, we would say listeners who are more prone to discover music with a unique identity and sound, could potentially be our listeners. We’re definitely not interested in being another inferior, recycled product, or a copy of another musical act found in abundance these days.

3. How difficult is it to get a gig for a band like yours and how have you worked around that?

That’s not as complicated as most people would think. Local venues here are very accessible for live performances, especially when you have quality recorded material to expose and to recreate live. It’s just a matter of communication and planning involving numerous parties related to the event. We haven’t played internationally yet. It’s a different ball game altogether, and we are looking forward to that.

4. Ultimately, what do you want to achieve and where do you realistically see it going?

Realistically, we think there is no limit to what we can achieve, but we need to make music the best we can and take it as far as possible. At the same time, we have to constantly challenge ourselves as we progress.

5. Who would you most like to share a concert billing with … and why this artiste?

Dead musicians with holograms. Maybe they are more manageable/obedient?

The major TV networks in the United States (CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox and CW) are already actively preparing their show schedules for the 2017-2018 season, with various pilots ordered and under production for fall.

From police detectives to medical practitioners and lawyers, what professions can we expect to see on the small screen later this year and which are stepping back from the limelight?

Safety first

It comes as no great surprise that police detectives, from the FBI to the CIA, are still popular characters among series creators and the viewing public. Despite the wealth of cop shows already on the small screen, the idea of keeping US citizens safe from crime will still be a popular theme for next season’s shows.

The latest trend for crime shows – looking for different angles to set them apart – is for female leads. ABC, for example, has two shows in the works. Las Reinas follows a police detective who is forced to confront her past and her family, who happen to be the most powerful criminal organisation in Miami, Florida. Meanwhile, The Trustee follows a stubborn detective who finds unlikely help from her precinct’s ex-con trustee.

Female characters are also popular picks for CIA and FBI shows. Toni Collette stars in Unit Zero, for example, and Salamander follows an FBI therapist hired to help track down a criminal who stole 66 safety deposit boxes. On a different theme, a magician is hired as an FBI consultant in Deception and a former CIA agent is called up by the NYPD to help solve a case in Serial Killer.

Docs and lawyers still popular too

Law and medicine are also safe bets for US TV. For ABC, Shonda Rhimes is prepping a kind of Grey’s Anatomy set at the Southern District of New York Federal Court, where lawyers for the defense and the prosecution rub shoulders on major cases and their personal lives intersect.

CBS is hoping to return to the profession with Perfect Citizen, the story of a former NSA lawyer who tries to relaunch his career in a Boston practice. Fox’s Controversy follows the Junior Counsel of a prestigious university dealing with a developing scandal when several star football players are accused of sexual assault.

After the success of House M.D., David Shore is back with The Good Doctor for ABC, based on a brilliant young surgeon with savant syndrome. Fox, on the other hand, will focus on an idealistic young doctor being trained by a tough but brilliant mentor in The Resident.

A more original but as-yet-untitled pilot for NBC promises a real-time medical drama following doctors and nurses over the course of a weekend at a Brooklyn hospital, which becomes overloaded after a catastrophic hurricane.

Hurray for journalists and astronauts

While a handful of engineers and other academics have been lead characters in American series like The Big Bang Theory, astronauts haven’t previously had much air time. CBS brings the profession to the small screen in Mission Control, and NBC’s Spaced Out follows a team tasked with building a rocket to Mars.

Otherwise, ABC has a Doomsday pilot in store. After the 9/11 attacks, the US government asks brilliant scientists and creative minds to imagine the darkest and most terrifying disaster scenarios and their possible solutions. Years later, the team is called back into service to prevent the disasters of their own design from actually occurring.

Since The Newsroom ended, journalists have all but disappeared from US TV screens. ABC is hoping to return to the profession with Libby & Malcolm, following a husband-and-wife pair of political pundits who work on the same TV show.

Former Scrubs star Zach Braff is signed up to play a journalist who decides to become his own boss in Start Up and CBS has ordered The Get, based on a team of journalists with unorthodox methods of investigation. – AFP Relaxnews

Audra McDonald has six Tony Awards and a voice that will make you believe in angels. That combination puts her in a place where she can be choosy when selecting her next job.

But, when she got a call about a job a couple of years ago she accepted without hesitation.

“I said yes the minute that Disney called because you say yes when Disney calls. If they told me that you were gonna sell churros in the park, I’d be like, yeah, I’m there,” says McDonald, who grew up in Fresno, California. “Also, it’s Disney and I have kids.”

The call was for the live-action version of Beauty And The Beast. McDonald plays Madame Garderobe, the opera singer-turned-furniture piece. She appears both in human form and then is the voice for the animated wardrobe.

McDonald’s no stranger to the recording studio, but she’s never done voice-over work.

“It could have been hard but that incredible team, headed by (director) Bill Condon, was with me every step of the way. Bill makes you feel so comfortable and is so collaborative, we just played in the recording studio,” McDonald says. “It just felt like make believe.”

McDonald’s long career on the stage was a big help in her doing the voice work.

Each time she steps in front of the audience, she must imagine the area as a big world without a crowd of people watching.

Voice recording was also easier than stage work because McDonald didn’t have to worry about what to do with her hands or if her body language was getting across the emotions of a scene.

She was freed from having to worry about her body. McDonald laughs and says that’s particularly true when you are playing a wardrobe.

McDonald’s introduction to Beauty And The Beast came through the 1991 animated film. She was on tour with The Secret Garden when a friend suggested they see it.

“I was a little sceptical because it was a cartoon,” McDonald says. “But, I walked out in tears. I was so moved by it. I was also excited because they had used Broadway voices and the movie was a real homage to musical theatre up there on the big screen with animation the likes we had not seen before.”

The Oscar-winning music is another reason McDonald loves being part of the movie. McDonald has performed music by some of the top composers. She’s not certain exactly what it is about the music of Howard Ashman and Alan Menken that has made their work so memorable.

“I think resonate is the right word,” McDonald says. “I don’t know what it is but there is something about the chemistry between those two that resonates.”

McDonald was excited to work with Emma Watson, who plays Belle, because the actor has been such an inspiration to young women. McDonald also loved getting to work with Emma Thompson, the film’s Mrs Potts, again. They have worked together on several projects, from the movie Wit to a recent performance of Sweeney Todd with the New York Philharmonic.

Beauty And The Beast was also a reunion of McDonald and Kevin Kline, who plays Belle’s father. They played husband and wife in the feature film Ricki And The Flash. – The Fresno Bee/Tribune News Service/Rick Bentley

Ronan Keating, the former lead singer of Irish boy band Boyzone, said he has caught the acting bug and wants to appear in more films after playing a part in the war drama, Another Mother’s Son, his first major role.

“I have been trying for a long time and I have had a few roles in different things, but this is my first major role and fingers crossed, I can do more,” Keating said at the film’s premiere in London recently.

Another Mother’s Son is a World War II drama based on the true story of Louisa Gould, a widow on the Nazi-occupied island of Jersey who agrees to hide a desperate young Russian escapee.

“It’s a story of community and support,” Keating said, “but also something that went on so close to home that people don’t realise, that Jersey was occupied by the Nazis, which is pretty hardcore if you think about it.” Keating, who attended the premiere with his pregnant wife Storm, took on the role of Gould’s brother.

“He’s a natural screen presence, he steeped himself in research, as we all did, and he took it so seriously,” veteran British actress Jenny Seagrove, who plays Gould in the film, said about working with Keating. “He was just humble and truthful and wonderful.”

Also in the film are John Hannah, Amanda Abbington, Susan Hampshire, Nicholas Farrell and Julian Kostov.

Keating was the former singer of Boyzone, which was put together in 1993 and had several hits including Love Me For A Reason, Key To My Life and Isn’t It A Wonder.

Boyzone was one of the most successful bands in Ireland, and split in 1999. – Reuters

Grace & Frankie stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, but there is another star of the series whose face has never been seen onscreen. That person is Nancy Rosen, the real-life artist who provides all of the paintings on the series for Tomlin’s character, who is a painter and art teacher.

The Chicago, Illinois-based Rosen has provided paintings for every season of the Netflix series, but her love of art goes back to her childhood. “I’ve been painting since I was five,” Rosen told Variety.

“I didn’t have any choice about that. That’s just what it’s always been. It’s always made up my entire life. It’s kind of what wakes me up in the morning and I do every day.”

Rosen is an old friend of Robbie Tollin, an executive producer on the series. “She and her family have been collecting my work since I was a little girl,” she said. “So when everyone was throwing work in to figure out Frankie’s work, she threw mine on the table and they picked it.”

While that sounds like a dream come true for many artists, Rosen said her work for the show has not been without its challenges.

“What I have discovered in working with Hollywood is they don’t give you much time,” she said. “They call you on a Sunday and say ‘We need something for Tuesday’. So it’s been wonderfully challenging. They’ve thrown me all sorts of wonderful challenges over the last three years that have taken me out of my comfort zone.”

According to Tomlin, she was unaware of Rosen’s work prior to joining the show, but quickly came to appreciate Rosen’s style and the way it jived with the unconventional nature of Frankie Bergstein. “Nobody knew what kind of painter Frankie was,” Tomlin said. “(Rosen’s work) seems eccentric, and a little manic, and wonderful, and dark at times and very comedic at other times. It’s just right.”

Frankie’s workspace in Grace & Frankie.

Series co-creator Marta Kauffman echoed that sentiment, even revealing that she now has one of Rosen’s works hanging in her office after it was featured on the show. “There was something. I just saw it and I said, ‘Oh my God, this is it. This is exactly what I want it to be’,” Kauffman said of seeing Rosen’s paintings for the first time.

“It’s quirky. It’s bold. It’s many things. And then when something like that happens and it just starts to fit, it just explodes. You can’t go back.”

S3 of Grace & Frankie, which is already showing on Netflix, begins with Frankie enjoying a solo art show displaying her work. Rosen provided all of the pieces featured in the scene, and even got to appear as an extra. “It was a really funny experience to stand there for four days and get paid to look at my own artwork,” she said with a laugh. – Reuters/Joe Otterson

Director Adrian Teh hopes his version of Goodbye Mr Loser will be a box office hit in Malaysia too.

The film, which made its world premiere at Japan’s 2017 Osaka Asian Film Festival recently, even has the blessings of the original’s joint writer-directors, Yan Fei and Peng Damo, who flew in to Malaysia to watch Adrian Teh’s version.

However, at a recent press conference held at GSC Mid Valley in Kuala Lumpur, Teh said he was not worried about matching the original film’s box office earnings.

“I don’t look at the box office when I make movies, because I always hope to do better each time. Now, with the directors of the original film here (in Malaysia), I hope that some of their good fortune would rub off on us. If we could collect up to 1% (about RM10mil) of the original version, that would be great!” he said.

Goodbye Mr Loser is about a down-on-his-luck musician who makes a mess of his life when he gets humiliated by his wife at the wedding of his high school crush. He unexpectedly gets a second chance in life when he finds himself travelling back in time to his schooling days in 1999, and ends up in the body of his teenage self.

Teh also roped in veterans like Malaysian actor Jack Lim to play the class teacher, Singaporean actor Richard Low to play the school principal, and Taiwanese actress Phoebe Huang to play Lin’s mother. Lin’s classmates are played by Tan Li Yang, Lex Pun, Vinx Lim, and Jack Yap.

“For the male lead, we went through 100 hopefuls. Following discussions with the original directors, we tried not to use big names, as we didn’t them to overshadow the movie character. So, we were looking for fresh faces and mostly those who had not acted in movies before,” he said.

They also spared no expenses in their efforts to cast lookalikes of celebrities from the 1990s era.

Teh said that their lookalike talents were sourced from different countries.

“A-mei is from Taiwan, Andy Lau is from China, Obama is from Indonesia, Jay Chou is from Hong Kong, and Yoo Jae Suk is from Kuala Lumpur,” he said.

Teh also revealed that the Malaysian remake almost got slapped with an 18-rating, on top of its 13 cuts.

After the filmmakers submitted an appeal to the Malaysian Censorship Board (LPF), the movie eventually ended up with a P13 rating and one censored scene.

The cut involved a three second-long kissing scene between Fang and Koh.

However, another kissing scene between Fang and Hoon remained intact. The reason given for the cut was that the first kissing scene was non-consensual.

Besides Malaysia, the movie is also slated to open in Singapore on March 30, and in Taiwan in April, while a Hong Kong release is still being negotiated.

Local Chinese radio station 988 recently welcomed another Hong Kong-based heavyweight cast member to its upcoming feature film A House Of Happiness.

After 13 days of shooting in Selangor, actor Richard Ng, 77, was joined by Malaysian-born actress Mimi Chu, 62, whom he had previously worked with on Singaporean sitcom Br4thers (or Brothers 4), which first aired in August 2003.

In A House Of Happiness, Ng plays a man suffering from dementia, and Chu plays the nurse caring for him.

Chu (real name Choo Yit Mei) flew in after wrapping a shoot in Taiwan and the production crew took a day’s break to welcome her with a dinner party at a Chinese seafood restaurant in Petaling Jaya recently.

During an interview after the dinner, Chu and Guangdong-born Ng spoke about their collaboration on Br4thers.

“Previously, we were in Singapore acting in an English language sitcom, and I played his wife,” Chu recalled, adding that it was a challenging project for her. “My English is rather limited, so the dialogue was quite impossible.”

Referring to their romantic thread in the storyline of A House Of Happiness, Chu slipped her hand into the crook of Ng’s arm, and said to him jokingly, “This time, I will be getting married to you again!”

Born in Ipoh, Chu is currently based in Hong Kong, where she has appeared in films like Delete My Love (2014), Mr &Mrs Gambler (2013), I Love Hong Kong 2012, and numerous TVB series.

She has also been part of several Singaporean series, including A Tale of 2 Cities.

Due to her packed schedule, Chu said that she would be “in Malaysia for only a few days”.

“I have only eight days to rush and complete 80 scenes. The directors are really amazing. I wonder if I would even have time to sleep,” she said.

“When I got off the plane, I heard from the others that the filming location was extremely hot. That’s what I’m most concerned about. I hope my scenes are all indoors, not outside in the sun. Otherwise, I’d have to slap on the sunblock as thickly as possible!”

The movie is jointly helmed by chief director Ryon Lee and executive director JY Teng. It is set to be released during Chinese New Year 2018.

Chu will have to do some dancing in the movie, and she groused good naturedly that she only heard about it when she got here.

Although director Teng assured her that there would be a dance instructor on the set to guide her along, she still complained jokingly, “Do you mean I have to learn on the spot and perform right away?”

Lee later added that dancing should not be a big problem for Chu, as the multi-talented actress and singer stages concerts quite regularly as well.

Popular Irish band The Cranberries, which became famous worldwide in the early 1990s for songs like Zombie and Linger, is in the news again.

The Cranberries, made up of singer Dolores O’Riordan, brothers Noel (guitar) and Mike (bass) Hogan and Fergal Lawler (drums), will be releasing its unplugged, greatest hits album Something Else in late AprilThe band will go on a promotional tour across Ireland and Britain soon after.

The new album will feature 13 acoustic remakes of the band’s top hits including Dreams, Ode To My Family, Free To Decide and Animal Instinct. The Cranberries recently posted an acoustic recording of Linger on its official Facebook page, as well as a picture of the album cover.

Before the new album premieres, here are seven tracks by The Cranberries which we think the younger generation should re-discover today.

3. Ode To My Family (No Need To Argue/1994)

5. Salvation (To The Faithful Departed)

6. Animal Instinct (Bury The Hatchet/1999)

7. Promises (Bury The Hatchet)

A total of US$30mil (RM133.2mil) in funding are up for grabs for delegates of this year’s Asean International Film Festival And Award (Aiffa).

For the first time since its inception in 2013, Aiffa is partnering with South-East Asian Audio Visual Association (Saava) who will be inviting a group of financiers to the festival.

“If you have a film project and you would like to pitch it, there are about five financiers available and they will decide whether to take up your project,” explains festival director Livan Tajang at a press event promoting Aiffa.

She adds that each film project stands a chance to receive between US$500,000 (RM2.2mil) to US$1mil (RM4.4mil) in funding. The move will allow Asean filmmakers the opportunity to collaborate.

“The basic criteria is that you have to be an Asean filmmaker and you work in an Asean country. You can be a first-time filmmaker or veteran filmmaker. And if the film showcases the Asean region, of course, we are more interested, but more importantly, what we’re looking for is commercial viability and the story,” says Leon Tan, head of the Malaysian chapter of Saava.

Aiffa, now running for the third time, is a biennial competition for filmmakers from the 10 Asean countries, held in Kuching, Sarawak. This year’s edition will span three days, beginning May 4, where various talks, film screenings and pitching sessions will take place, culminating the awards ceremony on May 6 at Pullman Hotel, Kuching.

Judged by film personalities including Malaysia’s U-Wei Haji Saari, there are 16 categories encompassing major aspects of the creative and technical areas of filmmaking in competition.

Aiffa has received over 120 entries so far, with over 40 submissions from Malaysia. Datuk Lee Kim Shin, Sarawak’s Assistant Minister For Tourism, reflects on the beauty of Asean countries as settings for films. “Everywhere you go in the 10 Asean countries, you are in a natural studio, where you can explore the richness of nature, the charming people and the centuries of history.”

Leading up to the awards night, Aiffa will be screening Asean films to the public for free every weekend in April at Godown Amphitheatre, Waterfront, in Kuching.

On May 4, Aiffa will also be organising a concert featuring Alleycats and Dayang Nurfaizah. On that night, the festival will be attempting a Guinness World Record for the largest crowd dressed in cat costumes!

Fans of British productions can now view them on the subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service, BBC Player.

To enjoy BBC Player, viewers must first be a subscriber of HyppTV’s Jumbo Pack, priced at RM60 a month.

Subscribers will then be able to watch BBC content on bbcplayer.com or by downloading the BBC Player app on the Apple App Store or Google Play Store.

TM New Media executive vice president Jeremy Kung said in a press statement: “Our latest partnership with BBC Worldwide to launch BBC Player will allow us to super serve our viewers with quality content from the BBC that they can watch anytime, anywhere.”

Myleeta Aga, BBC Worldwide senior vice president and general manager of South Asia and South-East Asia, also shared Malaysia is the second country in the world to launch BBC Player (after Singapore).

“Malaysians recognise and appreciate the premium content from the BBC, and our channels which are all available on HyppTV, are already very popular. Now, with BBC Player, we will be able to give Malaysians even more ways to watch their favourite content.”

One Ring to rule them all;
One Ring to find them;
One Ring to bring them all;
And in the darkness bind them.

These words, taken from The Fellowship Of The Ring by JRR Tolkien, have set fire to the imagination of millions of readers since they were first published in 1954. This epic fantasy novel was followed by The Two Towers and The Return Of The King, all of which have been adapted into animated movies and feature films.

Now, fans celebrate Tolkien Reading Day every March 25, which marks the day the men, elves, dwarves, wizards and hobbits of Middle-earth defeated the Dark Lord Sauron. So we present to you a Lord Of Rings special featuring Gandalf The Grey, The Lady Galadriel, Samwise Gamgee and Legolas Greenleaf, read by Malaysian actors.

The video stars Zahim Albakri as Gandalf [Gandalf speaks to Frodo about Gollum in The Fellowship Of The Ring], Susan Lankester as Galadriel [Galadriel is tempted by the One Ring in The Fellowship Of The Ring], Tung Jit Yang as Samwise [Samwise encourages Frodo at the battle of Osgiliath in The Two Towers] and Tony Eusoff as Legolas [Legolas’ Song Of The Sea poem in The Return Of The King].

The Library Is Open is an exclusive audio visual book series from Star2.com and TheStarTV.com that features writers, authors, poets, playwrights, screenwriters and actor from Malaysia and around the world reading from both local and international books and scripts.

The thing that Grimm had going for it from the start is its take on a hidden community of Wesen (creatures that are the basis of fairytales) that dwells among us. This premise allows the show to subtly tackle issues of bias and fear of the unknown, while entertaining us with clever dialogue and likeable characters.

This concept is not new; better shows like The X-Files and Buffy, The Vampire Slayer have done it.

But how Grimm chooses to be different, and remain relevant for six years, is the (weird) journeys it takes with the main characters. Its marketability also lies in its two-in-one deal – a monster-of-the-week framework worked into a police procedural mould. There is network-TV-safe violence like beheading with hardly any blood.

However, Grimm also has the tendency to start up a subplot and then totally abandon it. The most wasted one in my opinion is concerning the lead character going against his nature, which gets resolved in a little over two episodes.

Conspiracies also often come and go on this show with very little fuel to keep the fire going. There was one about the Wesen royal family up to something or other, and then an evil organisation known as Black Claw also getting up to something or other. Neither one was worth going ape – or woge-ing, to use the show’s terminology – over.

Let’s not even start on how the characters here frequently cheat death – they must have learned a lesson or two from Supernatural and The Vampire Diaries, for sure.

OK, a bit of history. Grimm tells us the Wesen are people who look like us except when they are frightened or angry. Then their visage changes to resemble an animal – a cat, a mouse, a wolf, etc – depending on the individual Wesen’s lineage. Their behaviour is also patterned after their animalistic “foundation”, so to speak. For example, if the Wesen is a Mauzhertz (of mouse origin), then their default personality is to be in a state of panic, ever ready to flee and hide.

What happens when a canine and a cat walk into a bar together? A scene from Grimm.

The theory here is that Wesen are the basis for the scary creatures in fairy tales, folklore and legends. For instance, the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood is of a Wesen line known as Blutbaden.

To keep the numbers of these “beasts” in check, there are the Grimms – humans with the ability to see Wesen for what they are. In the city of Portland, that Grimm happens to be homicide detective Nick Burkhardt (David Giuntoli), who quickly realises that most of his murder cases are Wesen-related. But as Nick and the audience discover, there are monsters and there are MONSTERS!

It is this distinction that ran through the series’ first season, establishing Nick as a different kind of Grimm – one who adheres to today’s more politically-correct code of conduct, exercising tolerance towards others. To further prove how inclusive he is, Nick befriends a Wesen – a reformed (hence vegetarian) Blutbad named Monroe (Silas Weir Mitchell), to be exact – in helping him solve these weird cases.

Nick’s logic is that as long as the Wesen is not a killer, he lets them be. That’s very civil, and a bit off the path for a Grimm, especially since he was handed all kinds of strange weapons by his aunt to aid him in his mission to kill Wesen.

In the first season, Grimm established its weekly murder procedural format, which it kept to quite consistently over its subsequent seasons.

Nick Burkhardt’s (David Giuntoli) current girlfriend in Grimm used to want to kill him or at least see him suffer. Can anyone say, awkward?

Amazingly enough, it has done so without becoming stale, with only a few boring episodes in its six years (that’s 123 episodes!). The special effects are not that super but are good enough, considering the demands of coming up with a suitably striking design for the Wesen of the week.

The series also goes far and wide to find its fantastic beasts. One episode revolved around an Aswang, a shapeshifting bloodsucker in Filipino folklore. Grimm even includes historical events and figures: Hitler, for example, was revealed as a bloodthirsty Wesen! That explains a lot.

What makes Grimm truly special is how it ensures that the development of the core characters is constantly in motion, going places where not many other series have dared to take their principal people.

When the audience first meets Juliette (Elizabeth “Bitsie” Tulloch), she is the love of Nick’s life – not very memorable and kind of annoying, to be honest. This beautiful red-haired girl, with big eyes and trusting heart, turns into the exact opposite by S4, ultimately becoming the Big Bad for the show that year. S5

saw her still being a badass, only working for the good guys, and still showing zero emotion when it comes to things like love and relationships.

In that season, Juliette – or Eve as she preferred to be known – was an unstoppable force. Now in S6, her character changes again – she’s neither fully Juliette nor totally badass Eve (one website has dubbed S6 Juliette as Julievette).

While her story arc may not as compelling as, say, Carol’s in The Walking Dead (from abused woman to a woman you don’t want to mess with, regardless of whether you have a tiger or not), hers is still an interesting arc.

Grimm pulls the same trick more than once – Big Bad Adalind Schade (Claire Coffee) is rehabilitated and becomes Nick’s love interest; Captain Sean Renard (Sasha Roiz) is constantly flip-flopping between villain and good guy from season to season (which is always fun to watch, thanks to Roiz’s performance).

Juliette (Elizabeth “Bitsie” Tulloch) proved in the course of the show that she had both beauty and beast inside her.

At the same time, the series acknowledges that not every character has to travel such a demanding route. Monroe remains the same person we met at the start of the show, but his story arc is my favourite – he goes from the smartest guy (with the funniest lines) on the show to getting married to the other smartest person on the show, Rosalee (Bree Turner), who can deliver some great zingers from time to time.

The audience can always depend on Monroe and Rosalee to ground the supernatural element although, ironically, they are Wesen. Through Monroe and Rosalee’s story, too, the issue of discrimination was tackled boldly as they are of two different kinds of Wesen (one is a wolf, the other is a cat).

One episode in Season Six also brings up the issue of mercy killing, which is handled with a delicate touch.

On the other end of the spectrum, Grimm did take itself a little too seriously in S5, so it’s good that S6 gets back into the humour groove (the third episode Oh Captain, My Captain being a case in point).

Perhaps what is most curious about S6 is how it decides to go fully with the monster-of-the-week formula starting from its fourth episode. There are only 13 episodes this season, and 10 episodes in, I am still not sure who the Big Bad is (surely it’s not a little girl!) or where the story about a magical stick is going (don’t ask me, I don’t understand it).

While we do not want a fairy-tale ending – that is not the point of the show, anyway – we do at least need an emotionally poignant finish where the characters are concerned (hopefully skipping over the tangled Juliette-Nick-Adalind relationship). But as of now, Grimm is carrying on like it’s going to continue its story in another medium (no pun intended).

At the end of the day, Grimm has had a good run and, whether we like it or not, every book does have a last page.

Singer Elfee Hefny has been singing since 2008 but somehow luck has not been on his side. After the release his first single Fahami Cinta in 2009, he went under the radar and then slipped out of the limelight.

For the last six years, Elfee has been focusing on his career in the hotel industry. And during his free time, he performs gigs on the side to keep in touch with show business. Since his love has always been singing, Elfee knew he would make a comeback someday.

With financial support from a few sponsors, Elfee started to work on his debut album late last year. The album, titled Jiwa Elfee, was finally released recently.

“If not for this group of friends (who helped me), I don’t think Jiwa Elfee would take off.

“My full time job in the hotel kept me busy. I also experienced hard times and that set me back. I finally managed to get back on my feet and completed my debut album,” said Elfee.

Produced by Atokcun Legacy and distributed by Insictech Musicland Malaysia, 5,000 copies of the album are available in the market and plans for a music video are in the pipeline.

“When I was given the songs to record, I was game to take on any genre. I was excited but nervous at the same time, thinking of how the response would be,” he said.

Aptly titled, Jiwa Elfee – which means Elfee’s Soul – the album is about his troubled emotions and the people he loves in his life.

“My journey as a singer had not been easy. There were too many distractions and hurdles that I had to overcome before I could release this album.

“But I have put these sad episodes behind and I am determined that nothing will stand in the way of my singing career,” said Elfee, who was referring to jealous competitors who went out of their way to sabotage his career in the past.

For Elfee, releasing an album is a personal achievement; the singer is not bothered with the glamour of showbiz.

“Many people assume I’m in this line because I want the attention. Truth is, I’ve always wanted to be a successful singer. This is the chance I have been waiting for,” said the 36-year-old whose real name is Mohd Hefny Mohamed.

Since most of the songs in the album are about overcoming pain and adversity, Elfee suggests those who are experiencing hard times give his album a try.

“I recommend those going through a rough patch in their love life to listen to my songs.

“We have all experienced hard times in our lives, only the degree is different.

“Believe me, it will calm your nerves just like what it did for me,” said Elfee, who is the second youngest of 11 siblings.

Award-winning Malaysian composer and songwriter Johan Nawawi has passed away on the morning of March 23. He was 52.

Johan was the husband of singer Nora (Nora Ariffin); the couple had four children together.

Nora confirmed the news of Johan’s death via a voice message, stating that her husband passed away after being warded at a hospital in Subang Jaya, Selangor. Meanwhile, their son Syakir Alif said that his father had died of a heart attack.

Born in 1965, Johan made a name for himself from as early as the 1980s composing romantic ballads and pop songs like Desa Tercinta, Naluri and Jentayu. A number of the songs were written for Nora, but many top Malaysian artistes have also had hits composed by Johan.

When he was only 19, he worked on the lyrics of a song that Adnan Abu Hassan (who passed away on March 18, 2016) had written. The song was Sinaran, which was later sung by a then relatively unknown singer, Sheila Majid.

Johan and Nora, both from Kelantan, met sometime in the early 1990s after the latter won a singing competition organised by RTM. She had gone to Johan to get some advice on a music career. With the help of Adnan, the pair started working together, resulting in Nora getting a contract with Warner Music.

Shortly after releasing her first album Sandiwara in 1994, Nora and Johan tied the knot.

His company, Johan Nawawi Sdn Bhd (JNSB), was established in 1984 and has been producing and publishing original music for artistes, films, TV shows and other commercial purposes.

A file picture from 2014 showing Nora and Johan Nawawi with their four children, at a Voice Of Ummi event. Photo: The Star

Director Bade Azmi had the unenviable task of helping to turn Kanang Anak Langkau: The Iban Warrior movie into a reality.

He initially turned down the job when he was offered it in 2013. “Then I got another call from the producer and someone from Finas (National Film Development Corporation Malaysia). They explained why I should take on the job … I finally agreed,” the director, famous for movies like KL Menjerit and Castello, said during an interview in Kuala Lumpur.

The idea to make an action movie based on the bravery of the late Datuk Kanang Anak Langkau – widely considered as one of the most decorated soldiers in Malaysia – came from producer Zainal Fikri.

“Seven years in the making. That’s how long we took to make this movie about Kanang,” Zainal said.

Kanang was an Iban jungle trekker-turned-soldier who fought against communist insurgency with the Malaysian Armed Forces in the 1960s. He received the Seri Pahlawan Gagah Perkasa medal (ranked highest in list of federal awards) for his services.

Zainal had met Kanang during an event in Sarawak in 2009. At that time, he asked for Kanang’s blessing to let him turn his story into a movie.

“Five other producers have approached him before. But none of it materialised. So, it seemed that he had given up. He said I have to speak to the Ministry Of Defence to get their approval as he is an army veteran,” Zainal remembered.

Zainal went to the ministry and got the green light he needed. It became his life mission to tell Kanang’s story simply because, well, he was inspired.

“He was a man with no formal education who strived to protect his country at all cost. He survived three shots to the body. His story was something different,” Zainal explained.

Director Bade (in black) admitted that it was not easy to tell a historical action movie that could also be entertaining to the audience.

Zainal spent years looking for funding to make the movie. At the same time, he also searched far and wide for an actor to play Kanang.

When Lance Corporal Langgi Anak Kanang was asked to play his late father in the movie, he turned down the offer. The 36-year-old soldier with the Malaysian Armed Forces didn’t think he was cut out to play the role.

“So, I went to almost every army camp in the country to find an Iban soldier who can play Kanang. When I couldn’t find anyone, I had to ask Langgi again. I told him that no one else could do it,” offered Zainal. Langgi finally relented and agreed to play his father in the movie.

Zainal also got the financial backing he was seeking. Things were looking up.

Sadly, Kanang died in January 2013, at the age of 67. The production for Kanang Anak Langkau: The Iban Warrior had to be postponed for the script to be revised. Bade had hoped for Kanang to be a part of the production as an adviser.

“I started thinking of how I can do this movie when Kanang is no longer around to tell me his story?” the director said. Bade got in touch with Kanang’s fellow soldiers to help him fill in the blanks.

“Somehow, it worked to my advantage. I got to tell Kanang’s story from different perspectives.”

His other challenge was to make the movie entertaining to the audience as well.

“It’s not easy to bring a historical film to life. If we dwell too much on facts, we might lose the viewers’ interest. So, we have to make the pace faster. We have to find a balance,” the director said about the movie which completed shooting in 2013.

Zainal said that he can finally breathe a sigh of relief.

At the movie premiere, Langgi who is a man of few words, shared which scene affected him the most. “My father had told me stories about him getting shot. I feel sad having to see that on screen.”

The “classic” Christmas tune All I Want For Christmas Is You, sung by Mariah Carey, is being made into a movie, the singer announced on Twitter on March 21.

The 1994 song is set to be adapted into a Universal Studios animated movie, to be released in time for this year’s holiday period, Carey announced via a video teaser on her Twitter feed.

In the video, in which Carey poses on a couch in traditional Christmas pajamas, the 2015 book adaptation of the song is displayed. The children’s book, written by Carey herself and illustrated by Colleen Madden, tells the story of a young girl who dreams of getting a puppy for Christmas. Mariah is also holding a puppy in the clip, but it is not yet confirmed whether the movie plot will follow that of the book.

(All I Want For Christmas is one of the most popular and recognisable modern Christmas-themed songs worldwide and is almost always included in every Christmas song compilation album you can find today. It has also been covered and re-recorded by many artistes including Ariana Grande, Michael Buble, Karmin, Miley Cyrus and She & Him.) – AFP Relaxnews

International Women’s Day is a global day to celebrate women’s achievements and it takes place on March 8 each year.

This year, Star Media Group is marking the whole month of March as “International Women’s Month”.

Star2.com will be paying tribute to women through our WOW-Women Do Wonders campaign and we want you to join us by sending in stories and pictures of the women in your lives.

If you search “Fazura dikecam” online, you’d find over 80,000 Google results about how the actress-singer has been criticised for everything – from a selfie with a dog to her singing abilities.

The 34-year-old Fazura admits there have been times when some of these unkind remarks got the better of her.

“I can’t say that I’m entirely positive. I’m only human,” she said during an interview in Kuala Lumpur.

In one infamous incident back in 2015, Fazura lashed out at a woman who left a comment with the word “KimK” on a photo of her and a friend posted on Instagram.

It was a misunderstanding on Fazura’s part as she had assumed the word meant something vulgar. But Fazura defended herself saying she was just standing up for a friend.

Last year, the gorgeous star performed at the F1 concert in Sepang. A recording of her live performance went viral and netizens commented with mostly unkind remarks about her vocal ability.

Fazura is seemingly aware of what most people have said about her on social media. “I’ve asked myself why people want to make the not-so pleasant stuff go viral.”

If you think Fazura is trying to gain some sympathy here, then you’re wrong. With a smile, the outspoken actress-singer expressed her gratitude to her haters.

“I’m not blaming anyone. I’ve come to a point where I feel that I should thank these people who have criticised me, have intentions to humiliate me or bring me down. Without them, I wouldn’t have the strength to push myself to be better,” she said.

Most recently, Fazura signed a three-year contract with Universal Music. The company will manage her showbiz career as well as facilitate the process to release her upcoming debut album.

She named composers like Ahmad Dhani (of Indonesian rock band Dewa 19 fame), Irfan Aulia Irsal (of Indonesian band Samsons), Numata (the team behind Anuar Zain’s Lelaki Ini) and Estranged’s Rich Gimbang as some of the names who will be contributing songs to her album.

In J Revolusi, Fazura does her own stunts. Photo: Grand Brilliance

Fazura is not afraid to admit that previously, she struggled with her voice on her debut single Sayangi Dirimu, released in 2015.

“I’ve worked to find my key. In the past few months, I’ve practised on my own to perfect my voice. I’m learning every day. I am under pressure to do well and get better,” she offered.

With the partnership with Universal, does Fazura feel like she has proven her critics wrong?

Apparently, it’s the last thing on her mind. “I don’t need to prove anything to anyone, actually. I think that in life if you depend too much on people’s validation and approval, then you would just die. My purpose is to make one of my dreams come true.”

When it comes to acting, Fazura said she has also worked hard to step out of her comfort zone. She made her acting debut in Datuk Rosnani Jamil’s Bicara Hati (2004) playing a student. That performance earned her the Malaysia Film Festival (FFM) award for Best New Actress.

Since then, through playing the “hopeless romantic girly girl” in films like Gol & Gincu, Pisau Cukur and Manisnya Cinta Di Cappadocia – Fazura has become synonymous with Malaysian chick flicks.

That perception is changing as Fazura has taken on different roles such as playing a bewitching langsuir (vampire) in Kami Histeria and a heartbroken kampung girl in Langit Cinta. In the recent action movie J Revolusi – which has made RM5mil at the local box office – Fazura plays an undercover agent.

“I got to hold real guns and I did my own stunts. I felt like Angelina Jolie when in reality, I was too scared to climb ropes for the movie,” she recalled with a laugh.

Next up for Fazura? She hopes to play a mentally deranged woman: “People assume I just want to act pretty. I’m always ready to do things that I’ve never done before.” If there is one thing that Fazura is not ready for yet, it would be settling down.

“Previously, my goal was to get married at 24. Then, I changed it to 30. Then I thought, ‘Really? I’m just getting started in life!’.”

Through her reality show Facing Up To Fazura, it was revealed that she was once romantically linked to actor Shaheizy Sam (her co-star in Manisnya Cinta Di Cappadocia).

In January, a video surfaced on YouTube showing American deejay Randy Seidman calling Fazura his “girlfriend”. Fazura maintained that she and Seidman are just friends.

“I don’t have any room for love right now. I think it would be unfair to anyone I’m dating (as I’m busy with work). Because when you’re in a relationship, you’d have to make time for dinner or to hang out.

“I don’t have time for all that. I am tired (after work) and I just want to go home. I want to read books or watch shows on TV.”

For now, her heart is set on her career … and perhaps to go on a solo backpacking trip. Her biggest fear would be to look back and think of the things she had not done.

“Who knows, I may not be here tomorrow. I just don’t want to regret not trying at all.”